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Where We Went Wrong
Nov. 30th, 2024 07:31 pmFor a while now I have been thinking that we really went wrong in the 1970s when we started pushing the Women's Liberation ideals.
The story that was being told at the time was this:
Women are too clever to be kept at home all day doing housework and minding children. They should be able to have careers which will bring them fulfillment."
Some women at the time said "But I find it very fulfilling to be at home keeping house and looking after my family" They were howled down. They were told that housework is boring. In fact there was an advertisement that actually said "No-one likes housework. We just have to do it, so the husbands should help. It is not fair that the wives should do it all. The wives should be able to go out and have careers and the housework and child minding should be split equally." Who can forget the "Johnnie wants a doll" advertisements?
The whole "Housework is boring" theme implied that anyone who thought they enjoyed being a housewife was obviously a very boring person indeed.
The message was wrong. I have to admit that I actually saw it then. I mentioned it to a few friends but it didn't get much traction. So I shut up as did other women who saw it. We were all howled down.
There was a big elephant in the room and they were ignoring it.
The Elephant was the all important role of Homemaker that was totally ignored.
Housework is not merely a set of horrid jobs that must be endured. It is a role that nurtures everyone of us. We all need someone to fulfill that role for us or to assist us in fulfilling it. Now we can see the bad effects of ignoring it. The elephant has trampled on our families and caused havoc to almost every person in society because we ignored it.
Everyone needs a homemaker. It is the one thing that can relieve the stress in our lives: and young people with families today seem to live such stressful lives that I find myself wondering how on earth they do it. I became a chartered accountant and my husband was a school teacher who later became a school principal. Whenever he was at home during school holidays, I felt noticeably less stressed. There was someone at home to peg out the clothes and get them in if it rained. He was able to get dinner on, call a plumber, do some shopping. The list goes on. He was able to fulfill that very important role of homemaker. While he was at school during term time, there was no-one in that role and the stress levels experienced by every member of our family were so much higher.
Look at us now. Child minding is not something that can be done by unpaid women at home. We once saw it as requiring no intellectual ability whatsoever. In fact that was one of the basic tenets of the Women's Liberation Movement. Now we want our child minders to have a university degree and society is paying megabucks to provide those services. Meanwhile the poor families are living lives with stress levels through the roof. Society is now geared so that a family needs two incomes at least in order to survive. They have to get children ready for child care every day, pick them up after work and then they are expected to get dinner on, supervise homework and get all the other tasks done so they can repeat it all next day.
It is absolutely ridiculous and it is high time someone called it out.
If our society were to pay the same amounts directly to families to allow one of the partners to stay home and be a homemaker until children were at least 14, then we might have a less stressed society with less children roaming streets and getting into strife. Children would feel more nurtured.
The correct message that the Women's Liberation Movement should have promoted is "Women who successfully keep house and mind children have already demonstrated that they are very intelligent and capable management material. Their tasks are varied and complex. They have managed different levels of client expectations and they have shown that they are capable of keeping to a timetable despite unforeseen interruptions."
By acknowledging the complexities of managing a household, they would have found it much easier to get men to take part, if a woman did still want to have another career.
To put it bluntly, They should have shown respect for women and the role that they played. This respect would engender a willingness by husbands to assist if necessary and would also help mothers to have more respect in the eyes of teenagers. Just to help them through those hard years.
But it is too late now - or is it?
The story that was being told at the time was this:
Women are too clever to be kept at home all day doing housework and minding children. They should be able to have careers which will bring them fulfillment."
Some women at the time said "But I find it very fulfilling to be at home keeping house and looking after my family" They were howled down. They were told that housework is boring. In fact there was an advertisement that actually said "No-one likes housework. We just have to do it, so the husbands should help. It is not fair that the wives should do it all. The wives should be able to go out and have careers and the housework and child minding should be split equally." Who can forget the "Johnnie wants a doll" advertisements?
The whole "Housework is boring" theme implied that anyone who thought they enjoyed being a housewife was obviously a very boring person indeed.
The message was wrong. I have to admit that I actually saw it then. I mentioned it to a few friends but it didn't get much traction. So I shut up as did other women who saw it. We were all howled down.
There was a big elephant in the room and they were ignoring it.
The Elephant was the all important role of Homemaker that was totally ignored.
Housework is not merely a set of horrid jobs that must be endured. It is a role that nurtures everyone of us. We all need someone to fulfill that role for us or to assist us in fulfilling it. Now we can see the bad effects of ignoring it. The elephant has trampled on our families and caused havoc to almost every person in society because we ignored it.
Everyone needs a homemaker. It is the one thing that can relieve the stress in our lives: and young people with families today seem to live such stressful lives that I find myself wondering how on earth they do it. I became a chartered accountant and my husband was a school teacher who later became a school principal. Whenever he was at home during school holidays, I felt noticeably less stressed. There was someone at home to peg out the clothes and get them in if it rained. He was able to get dinner on, call a plumber, do some shopping. The list goes on. He was able to fulfill that very important role of homemaker. While he was at school during term time, there was no-one in that role and the stress levels experienced by every member of our family were so much higher.
Look at us now. Child minding is not something that can be done by unpaid women at home. We once saw it as requiring no intellectual ability whatsoever. In fact that was one of the basic tenets of the Women's Liberation Movement. Now we want our child minders to have a university degree and society is paying megabucks to provide those services. Meanwhile the poor families are living lives with stress levels through the roof. Society is now geared so that a family needs two incomes at least in order to survive. They have to get children ready for child care every day, pick them up after work and then they are expected to get dinner on, supervise homework and get all the other tasks done so they can repeat it all next day.
It is absolutely ridiculous and it is high time someone called it out.
If our society were to pay the same amounts directly to families to allow one of the partners to stay home and be a homemaker until children were at least 14, then we might have a less stressed society with less children roaming streets and getting into strife. Children would feel more nurtured.
The correct message that the Women's Liberation Movement should have promoted is "Women who successfully keep house and mind children have already demonstrated that they are very intelligent and capable management material. Their tasks are varied and complex. They have managed different levels of client expectations and they have shown that they are capable of keeping to a timetable despite unforeseen interruptions."
By acknowledging the complexities of managing a household, they would have found it much easier to get men to take part, if a woman did still want to have another career.
To put it bluntly, They should have shown respect for women and the role that they played. This respect would engender a willingness by husbands to assist if necessary and would also help mothers to have more respect in the eyes of teenagers. Just to help them through those hard years.
But it is too late now - or is it?
